Clinton Woman Called A Hero After Daring Lake Rescue

You never know when your moment to be a hero will come. For Renee Dostie, a mother of three, hers came Thursday while at Lake George with her family. “I was down at the bottom with the three older children, and a woman said I need someone who’s a strong swimmer. I looked around, nobody was going,” said Dostie.Dostie looked out in the water and realized what was happening. “I saw the little girl bobbing up and down with her arms in the air. I knew there was a second person, but I couldn’t see who or what it was, I just started swimming out.”What she found was a more frightening scene than she ever could have imagined. A young girl, who Dostie says was about 8-years-old, was struggling to stay afloat while holding on to her father who was unconscious in the water next to her. “When I got to the little girl she was pushing her father down to stay afloat,” Dostie said. “He didn’t come up for air at all. At that time I didn’t know it was a grown man.”With her three kids looking on, Dostie’s attention was focused on helping a little girl she hardly knew. “So I told her immediately, you need to calm down right now. Because she was pushing me down. She ended up getting on my back and she would not let go of her father. So she was tugging her father along with her.”Dostie managed to carry both the father and daughter in far enough to where her brother-in-law and sister-in-law, Stacey Ramer, who never heard the initial call for help, could give her a hand. “She was struggling when I got to her,” Ramer said. “Trying to keep the little girl above water and apparently, unbeknownst to all of us, hauling somebody else. She was really struggling. Her lips were purple when I got to her. Thank God she had gotten to where she could touch the bottom.”Ramer and Dostie’s brother-in-law helped the man, 33-year-old Paul Borneman III of Nantucket, Massachusetts, who regained consciousness on the shore. He was taken to a hospital where he was kept overnight. Both he and his daughter are reportedly okay. But Borneman may owe his life to Renee Dostie. “Absolutely no doubt,” Raymer said. “We have no idea how long he was under water. I didn’t see him above water once.”And Renee Dostie may be the only one who doesn’t think she’s a hero. “It more freaked me out,” she said. “Number one on my list is to get CPR certified. And I called my parents right up and thanked them for giving me swimming lessons when I was younger.”